Hero
by GreatOverseer
Summary: "The Fourlegs would be back tomorrow. From the way the clouds have moved today, it's going to rain, meaning the Walkers and Archers will be out in full force. I still have to grab food. I still have to go through them. I still have to find a weapon. I still have to survive."
1. Chapter 1

What makes a hero?

A question I have always dwelt on.

A hero certainly doesn't kill.

He only defends.

Am I a hero?

No. Not ever.

Have I killed?

Yes, many times. The green, frowning Fourlegs, the Walkers, the Archers.

But have I been defending myself the whole time?

Not always. Almost never, in fact.

But I have some times, when I was under strain and pressure.

Is that strain and pressure needless?

Does a hero have strain and pressure on his life?

...

What makes a hero?


	2. Chapter 2

_How long have I ran?_ All in front of me new chunks appear. Grass, snow, and ice have been trodden on.

The green Fourlegs chase me, behind me every step of the way. They watch with cold, indifferent eyes. They hiss in their evil voices. So too do the Walkers, but slower and with much less effort given.

Now it is starting to get cold. The cold bites into my bones even though I wear a warm leather tunic. The spruce trees around me seem to arch up, into the sky, as some ghastly natural cathedral of pain.

Then ahead of me suddenly, lights flash. Fire roars into the sky. The Fourlegs disperse and run off to the sides hissing and shrieking. I call into the dark.

"Who uses fire in this forest?"

A voice answers. It is the first human voice I have heard in a long while.

"Me. I am defending you from the Creepers."

"Where do you stay?" I shout.

"In yonder trees," the voice says. "Come."

I follow the voice, and the light. Eventually my eyes fall upon a wood house of middling size in a glade of tall spruces.

"My friend sits inside, warming by the fire," the mage, who is now clearly visible, says. "You may join him, if you will."

The mage's ice-blue eyes glint behind a white hood rimmed with blue and white fur, connected to a white parka and leggings.

"Good mage," I say, "you've just gotten yourself another customer!" I study the interior of the house through the open door. A merry fire blazes in one wall. Beside it sits a person in red leather leggings, with an ordinary brown leather tunic draped over his shoulders. He eats a cooked porkchop with his bare hands.

"Traveler, this is my friend, Redfall. I am Burushiru the ice mage. You are welcome to my abode," Burushiru the ice mage says. Redfall looks up from his porkchop, gives a little noncommital wave, and returns.

"Pray forgive," Burushiru says of Redfall. "He can be terribly rude."

"Rude I have seen," I say. "What I can't stand are the fourlegs bumping into you and taking out the ground from your feet."

"Fourlegs?"

"You call them Creepers," I say.

Burushiru frowns.

"What could be your name, traveler," he asks of me.

"I am Overseer, of Treefell," I respond. "Treefell is no more; the Archers came and destroyed it. Fourlegs swarmed over the ruined walls. There was chaos and destruction everywhere. Then the whole thing seemed to just explode."

"And you are the only survivor?" Burushiru inquires, eyes wide.

"Yes," I say. "Not even my maiden fair survived, for she was at the epicenter of the attack, the town square."

"It is a terrible thing to lose a thing of beauty." Burushiru bows his head.

"Like you can talk," Redfall says suddenly. "You haven't had one thing of beauty to speak of since you were born." He laughs and tears at his porkchop. Juice dribbles down his chin.

Burushiru ignores him.

"Do you have tools, armor, weapons?" he asks.

"They were destroyed," I reply.

"You were helpless out there," Burushiru gasps. "No food, no water?"

"None at all."

"Then you must eat, Overseer," Redfall says, holding out another porkchop. I take it gladly, and bite into it. It tastes salty and spicy, and the smoke flavor is underneath it all. Burushiru hands me a tankard of water. I drink it all in one go and hand it back to him.

"This place is indeed comfy," I say. "It is hard to believe it's out here in this uninhabited land." I finish off the porkchop, smacking my lips.

"You have a dribble down your chin," Redfall observes.

"Touche, my friend," I reply. Redfall looks down at his chin, hurriedly wipes the drip off, and returns to his food.

"It is hard to believe, yes," Burushiru says to me. "Truth be told, our city, the once-grand City of Iceridge, is gone forever, blasted away into oblivion by the abominations."

"He means the town was blasted apart by mutated Creepers, irradiated, then set on fire as a parting gift," Redfall explains. "Just FYI."

"Well, if that is done with," Burushiru says to the room at large, "it is time to lay our heads down to sleep, and forget until tomorrow our fights, fears, and emotions." He frowns at Redfall. "You still have wool, right?"

"Yeah," Redfall says derisively. "i suppose you want to make him a bed?"

"No," Burushiru frowns. "I want you to make him a bed." He points to the crafting table against the far wall. "Now." Redfall grumbles, walks over with an enormous show of being lame, and within seconds has a fully made bed. He throws it at me, and I catch it deftly.

"I will show you to the bedroom," Burushiru says, and beckons. I follow him upstairs, to a dimly lit room with large windows set to the back, where the beds all have their headboards facing.

"Place your bed at the end," the ice mage orders. I indeed place my bed, and it springs to life, the mattress inflating and the sheets smoothing. The pillow looks nice. Redfall comes upstairs, climbs into his own sloppily made and stained bed, and stuffs a pillow over his head to block out noise.

"He is not usually like this," Burushiru explains. I nod and go wash up. As I look in the mirror I see the stubble, see the scratches and burn marks where cinders have fallen, see the eyes rimmed with black drapes. My black tunic is torn, my arms bruised and scraped. I turn, and confront a claw mark running down to halfway down my back, probably gifted to me by a Walker.

_I'm not usually like this_, I think to myself. _Then again, I'm not usually like a lot of things. I'm me._

I tuck myself in a few minutes later, and let myself drift into the realms of thought.

_The Fourlegs will be back tomorrow. From the way the clouds have moved today, it's going to rain, meaning the Walkers and Archers will be out in full force. I still have to grab food. I still have to go through them. I still have to find a weapon._

_I still have to survive._


	3. Chapter 3

_In the half-awake realm between dream and sleep, I see things._

_Lava falls a thousant feet high. Red, scraggly cliffs set in an ocean of molten rock. Hideous beings with swords and other weapons. And finally, the dark skeleton. It stares with eyes of night, of pure unlit void, of emptiness._

_Then suddenly a darker shape looms. Its eyes give a stabbing violet light. The dark skeleton falls back. The thing with the glowing eyes looks at me. directly at me. I open my mouth wide, and the thing lunges..._

"Hey!" Someone is shaking me. I look up into Redfall's face. There are admittedly better things to look at in this world, but after seeing the beasts his face is a relief.

"You were screaming, man," Redfall says, slapping me across the face. "Snap out of it!"

"It was a dream," I gasp, sitting on the edge of my bed. Bright light streams in. Birds twitter.

"The sun ain't going to last long," Redfall says, looking out the window. "From the way the clouds are today, we're going to see some rain. Maybe even lightning!"

"The Fourlegs," I say, standing. "They will be out there. So will the Archers and the Walkers, if my memory serves correct."

"You should have breakfast," Burushiru says from the furthermost bed, "so you do not starve in the torrent and die."

"Okay," I say. "Tell me one thing you got."

"Beef." The answer is short.

"Beef is good," I reply. "Where is it?"

"In the furnace," Burushiru says.

"In the furnace?" I ask. "They will burn up, by Notch's Diamond Sword!" I run downstairs. The beef chops turn out to be perfectly fine, sitting in the baking rack. I stare dumbly at one until Redfall says, in an annoyed tone, "Well? Are you going to eat it or just stare at it all day?"

I take one, and gently throw it to Redfall, then dig into one myself. It is not as good as the porkchop from last night, but it is twice as filling. The fibers are the best part.

When we are all finished, Burushiru calls me over to the chest near to the crafting table.

Made of jungle wood, it is a beauty. Mahogany? I am pretty sure, although the wood looks more red than brown.

"Inside are weapons," Burushiru tells me. "I do not use weapons as I am an ice mage, Redfall uses his bare hands, and only you actually need anything." Inside the chest's rich interior are some loaves of bread, a pickaxe with a carved stone head, and an iron sword, the pommel of which is wrapped in soft leather.

I take the iron sword, the pickaxe, and the bread, and walk outside into the freezing rain with Burushiru and Redfall. The trees are dripping with moisture, and the rain makes gentle holes in the snow cover.

Immediately after the first fifty meters I see a Fourleg. It does not see me, for I am stealthy and do not make a sound. However, Burushiru and Redfall do not see it, and happily keep walking.

The green monster hisses softly and crawls after them. I take my sword and quietly bring up the rear.

Now the snow is thinning out majorly. The rain continues to pour. Ahead I see the dim, hunched outlines of swamp trees. A Walker floats facedown in a pool of stagnant, brown water.

As I near the Fourleg, it begins to hiss a warning to Burushiru and Redfall, who look behind them in silent horror. Neither of them has swords, and Burushiru's ice spells evaporate off his hands in the dull humidity and heat.

I sieze the opportunity and bring the sword to rest in the Fourleg's brains. The thing stops, its head dripping gray blood. Then it keels over. On the ground it begins a devilish transformation into gunpowder, collapsing and folding into waves and dunes, and finally is blown away by a freak gust.

"We could not have survived without you," Burushiru cries.

"I could've," Redfall says ungratefully.

We continue.

The trees grow much much thicker.

The vines hit my face all the time now, and the foul stench of the leaves is enough for us to keep silent.

All around us, silence.

And silence.

And still more silence.

Then, a sound. Squelching sounds. A smell of compost and dank bogs reaches my nose.

Somewhere closeby, and ahead of us, a green, gelatinous mass creeps along the ground. It has no form or shape. Parts of it seperate from the original, fall behind, and then meld back in.

"What is this monstrosity," I hear Burushiru whisper.

The blob seems to hear us, for it suddenly changes course, straight in our direction. I draw my sword.

"This is going to take a while," I say, and dash forward. The blob rears, meters up in the air, a tortured sickly form, glowing against the sudden lightning. I try to stop myself, but my momentum carries me into the blob's sticky interior.

Inside, everything has a green sheen to it. Bubbles of air are trapped in the folds of green goo, popping and being swallowed by the rest. But two things are not slimy, not folding into other things. They are eyes. Two shiny, black, round eyes. Two shiny, black, round, and definitely malevolent eyes.

A rattling voice intrudes inside my head.

LET US BE, It says. THAT IS NOTCH'S COMMAND TO YOU. YOU HAVE BROKEN THE COMMAND. Pause. I feel my heart beating. PREPARE TO DIE.

A burning pain comes. I scream and thrash out with my sword arm. The beast's body sucks the sword right out of my hand, and as I watch it dissolves.

YOU ARE POWERLESS, the voice says again. YOU ARE BURNING. YOU SHALL FEEL PAIN. YOUR FRIENDS ARE UNABLE TO HELP. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOURSELF?

I suddenly see a slight opening in the side of the blob, an opening that had once housed a particularly large bubble of air, and grin.

"I feel good about myself," I say, and push through the hole. The blob instantly collapses atop itself. The eyes waver.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, the voice asks in a voice of pure hate. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE...

And it fades away.

"What," I say. "The Nether," I continue. "Was that?" I conclude.

"I don't know, but you're red as a mooshroom and about as coherent as one," Redfall chuckles.

"Where's my tunic," I ask.

"It burned off," Burushiru says. Redfall smirks at him.

I look down at my legs.

"Where are my pants," I asked.

"They burned off," Burushiru replies. Redfall smirks at him.

"Where are my-" I begin to ask, and then decide to forget it. "Whatever," I say. "Let us just find some mushrooms and go home."

An hour later, safe, warm, freshly cleaned, and with a new tunic the color of ebony draped over my shoulders, I think back to the conversation with the thing, that I now dub as a Slime.

_Let us be_, I think, _that is Notch's command to you. You have broken the command. Prepare to die._

_Who was that Slime?_

_Who have I killed in self-defence?_

My raw skin itches, so I climb into bed, shut my eyes, and drift into sleep, again.


	4. Chapter 4

_I dream again._

_This time the visions are more disturbing. A dark tunnel leading who knows where. A pair of blank white dots at the other end. The dots grow closer._

_I'M HERE. The voice is evil, laced with sugar but almost pure arsenic._

_A face, scarred, pitted, rough, the eyes blank, white and unseeing, the mouth opening onto a set of browned, broken teeth, the gums black, the tongue a flopping, limp, brown rag._

I wake up with a start.

Burushiru and Redfall are gone somewhere. The bedroom is silent. It is the middle of the night.

But I still hear voices. Not from downstairs, but from outside.

"...house is pretty," a low voice says.

"Worthless wood," another, more reedy voice cries.

Then the sounds of footsteps, of the door downstairs opening. A muffled snort.

Carefully, quietly, so as not to hint at my presence, I pick up a shovel from where it rests against the wall and creep downstairs. Crouching behind a chair, I watch the two people or things inspect the kitchen.

They're humanoid. However, no sane man carries a double headed battle axe around with him.

"This is good," I hear the deep-voiced one say to his colleague. From behind the chair I see the shape of a loaf of bread come out of the mahogany chest.

"Yes, indeed, and so are these," the second one says to the first one with the deep voice. Deep Voice hands the loaves of bread to Reedy Voice, who in turn hands him our supply of torches.

Raising the shovel, I aim it at Deep Voice, but Reedy voice cries, "Behind you!," and I find myself lifted bodily high up into the air and thrown into the far wall. My back hurts bad, but I fight to keep ahold of the shovel.

The men look like pigs who had carried themselves onto their hind legs and learned to speak and wear clothing. They have small piggy eyes, large flat piggy noses, and a mouth with sharp tusks sticking out of the bottom gums.

"The resident is angry," Reedy Voice warns Deep Voice, but too late. I leap up and hit him with the back of the shovel's head. Deep Voice collapses. He's obviously dead, for his skull is split.

Reedy Voice takes out an iron sword. It has been carved into an intimidating curved shape, and looks very sharp. Light glints off the edge.

"How's about we dance, little man," Reedy Voice bellows, and lunges. I catch the blow on the edge of my shovel and deflect it. Reedy Voice stumbles, and I sink the tip into his chest. He squeals.

"Fool!" And then he dies.

Blood pools around my feet, and I stare at what I have done.

_I'm not a hero._

_I'm not good._

_I've murdered in cold blood._

_What is my fate?_


	5. Chapter 5

The morning after, Burushiru and Redfall come back, laden with logs and stone. They drop their load off on the crafting table and create many, many wood planks. I volunteer to help, and soon we have over a hundred.

Burushiru is the first one to notice the stolen goods.

"Where is the bread and where are the torches," he asks me.

"Stolen by Pigmen," I reply. "I killed them, but didn't get the goods back."

"Nether!," Redfall swears. "Racking Pigmen!"

"Overseer," Burushiru says, "if the bread has been stolen we need to get more wheat. There's none that can grow within the spruce forest."

"So that means..." I ask.

"We go on a quest to collect wheat," Redfall says. "Simple enough." He laughs. "The pigmen sure were a hole in our plans. Why are they even out in this here world?"

"Magical disturbance," Burushiru says. "The pigmen were sent back temporarily, overnight, from extinction. Bringing an entire dead race back to life, and sustaining it for a night takes much Mana. Whoever did this is probably either dead or a Superior Mage."

"Forget it," I say. "If the Pigmen are dead now, they probably won't come while we're out."

_I killed two in cold blood._

_Will I kill more if I'm wrong?_

"We must hurry then," Burushiru says wisely, "before night sets in!"

Setting off at a run out the door, we soon tire and stop for rest next to a large spruce.

After this rest, we continue to run. The weather is warmer the farther we run, and the grass shows in several places.

"We must be in a plains biome," Burushiru observes an hour after we started.

"Yeah, tons of sheep," Redfall says knowledgeably. "Tons of farmland, tons of..."

"Look," I shout. I see something on the horizon. It looks vaguely village-shaped. Sprinting towards it, I yell in triumph and raise my arms up in the air. The others follow along behind me, yelling for me to slow down, but I pay them no heed; I'm that happy to see a village.

The fields of said village are nearly barren, but I find ten bundles of wheat. I give five to Burushiru and five to Redfall, then trot off into the nearest street. The houses are not lit from the inside, and the usual bustle of the bignosed, primitive villagers is gone.

_Strange._

_Who killed them?_

And then I hear it. A squelch.

My heart freezes, turns black, and rots away inside my chest.

_If they were here..._

I emerge in the center square, and stop dead. On every building there are bloodstains. The windows are either broken or sitting a few meters away from their actual frames. And on the roofs, the walls, the ground below each even, there are Slimes, moving, feasting, dissolving villagers within. I see one small villager child slowly bubbling away in a Slime's stomach, and grip my iron hoe like a weapon.

_If the Slimes are killers too, I've got a match._

_They even killed the children._

The first slime that notices my arrival oozes my direction and rears up.

YOU SEE THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS BEFORE YOU, the voice says in my mind. CHOOSE CAREFULLY WHAT YOU DO IN THIS LIFE, OR IT SHALL WEIGH YOU DOWN TO DEATH'S DOOR.

"They're not my actions," I nearly scream at the oozing blob. "They're yours! You massacred these villagers, you and your cronies, and you killed every one of them. Even the children!"

WOULD YOU NOT HAVE DONE THE SAME? MURDERER? The voice is taunting this time.

"I'm not a murderer," I bellow. "I'm a human! How racking dare you!" And I throw the hoe at the slime next to the ringleader. It splits down the middle, curves in the air, and returns to my hand.

YOU HAVE BROKEN OUR CODE, HUMAN. The slime reared even higher. OR SHOULD I SAY MURDERER? The slimes charge. I brace myself for the impact, but suddenly there is a clink, and I see another slime frozen solid. Burushiru is beside me, casting ice spells at the Slimes. One by one they fall. But more come. They flood out of buildings, through vacant doorways, even through the chimney of one house.

FACE THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR MURDERS, the leader Slime says inside my head.

"NO!," I scream, shattering a half frozen slime with my iron hoe.

"What are you talking about, Overseer?" Burushiru yells in my direction.

I did not respond. I was at that moment hurled into the air by the leader slime, into the large house behind me.

NOW YOU FEEL US. NOW YOU KNOW US. WE ARE THE AVENGING ARMY, THE ARMY OF THE CREATURES YOU'VE MURDERED. WE SPIT ON YOU, LAUGH AT YOU, MOCK YOU, SHAME YOU, BEAT YOU DOWN TO THE EARTH, TO THE BEDROCK, TO THE VOID.

I stand up, bruised, battered, and bloody.

"No." My voice is low and determined. "I won't be beaten down." I raise the hoe above my head. "I am the one who is defending himself. I'm immune to your accusations. I'm also immune to you yourselves!" As the leader slime melds and meshes around my body, I scream, "Too late!," and swing the hoe in a wide arc. The body of the slime quivers, parts, and explodes. The other slimes deform, melt, liquify, until there is a river of the stuff swirling past my feet.

_I have killed a hundred, maybe a thousand._

_What if I am a murderer?_

I prod a chunk of the leader slime that still hasn't decomposed. It looks up at me with two small, beady eyes.

"And you won't avenge anything," I say and crush it under my heel. Then I returned to Burushiru and Redfall, who are staring openmouthed at what they have seen.

"Well," I say. "Aren't we going to bake some bread?"

That night, as I sit on the side of my bed, Burushiru comes up to me. He sits down next to me.

"Overseer," he asks.

"Yeah," I reply.

"Why did you yell at those Slimes?"

I swallowed. My hands are shaking. My eyes ache. I force words to come out of my throat.

"Because they think I'm a murderer."

Burushiru's eyes widen.

"No, you are not a murderer," he says.

"Even so, now I think I really am a murderer. I've been conflicted over the last few days. When I killed the Creeper, when I killed the first Slime, when I killed the Pigmen, and when teh reprocussions of my actions brought a wave of death upon a small village. If I am a murderer, it won't be hard to believe."

And I fall, gently, to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

_The dream is hate._

_Hate smiles at me._

_The smile cracks worlds._

_In the dream, I begin to become Hate's servant._

_I kill innocents. I kill many things. I flood towns. I blow up mountains. I strut around in diamond armor, killing the newborn, the inadept, and the peer._

_I mine into the land that Notch has given us. I cut the trees that Notch planted for us. I kill the animals that Notch created for us._

_I am impersonal and cold. I create huge world-gobbling machines, machines which churn up the ground and fill the sky with the cries of the dying and the stench of the dead. I exploit the Redstone and use it to carve the oceans, to get ores that were intended for future generations._

_I crave the sight of people running._

_I am a murderer._

A scream wakes me up. i try to find the source of the scream in the darkened room, now full of the sounds of Burushiru and Redfall waking up, and then realize it is my own.

"Let me guess," Redfall says jokingly. "You dreamed you stabbed your buddy, stole his stuff, then suicided off the top of a mountain?"

"Listen," I growl, and grab Redfall by the scruff of his neck. I press him against the wall of the bedroom.

"Am I a murderer?" I ask him in a low voice. He remains silent, so I press harder. "AM I?" I shout.

"Calm down," Burushiru whispers placing a hand on my shoulder. "We are going out today to the forest, to collect wood. Won't that be fun?"

With a sigh, I release Redfall. The man scrambles up to his feet.

"He's a maniac," he yells. "He tried to crush me against the wall!"

"He just had a nightmare," Burushiru reassures. "He is completely safe otherwise."

I breathe heavily, watching the birds fly around outside the window, and wonder why they're so bloody cheerful all of a sudden. A red veil lifts from my vision. The anger subsides.

The morning air is crisp and cold. I don't care. I walk purposefully in front, axe in hand, ready to be used. My black tunic hugs my body.

The birches, as they did on the night I'd arrived at Burushiru's house, seem to arch over me. I start to methodically chop wood, and soon I have several stacks of wood in my inventory.

The sun starts to get warmer, and I relax. I am no longer breathing heavily. I walk lazily to another tree and cut it down, then another. Another. Another.

_Whee_, my mind says.

Suddenly from the brush to my right... a sound. Feet. Light ones. Looking that way, I see a Fourleg leaping towards me. i sendit flying in a cloud of gunpowder with my axe. But then another comes. I try to cut it, but it merely explodes instead, and I fly back and land hard on the ground. I'm covered in snow, but I don't care. More Fourlegs are coming out. We're surrounded. My axe is almost broken.

_This_, I think,_ is the end._

And then a sound.

Merry laughter.

Bell-like, ringing laughter.

A girl's laughter.

The Fourlegs look around, then follow some unseen trail. I wait. Then I hear explosions. Quickly I dash over to the hill that the Fourlegs had climbed over. Fire rages in a clump of trees nearby. I run up the hill and look down into the crater.

There is a girl lying inside the crater.

She has her face turned up. She's beautiful, but evidently slipping away.

"Burushiru?" I call. There is an answering pitter-patter of feet, then Burushiru is beside me, looking at the girl. A second later and he's at her side. He gently places a small piece of beef chop in her mouth, chews it for her, and helps her swallow it.

The girl's eyes open.

I walk over and kneel by her side. She looks at Burushiru, then at me.

"Which one of you blew me up?" she asks, pointing a bow at my neck. Her voice has a pleasant ring to it, but not when I was about to get myself skewered on an arrowhead.

"I just found-" I begin, but the girl pulls back the string.

_The red haze reappears._

"I really woudn't do that if I were you," I snarl.

"Hah!" The girl throws back her head and laughs, then keeps pointing the bow at me. "What are you gonna do if I let go?"

"This," I answer, and leap up into a tree. The girl is looking for me around the ground level, until I let the axe drop and pounce from the limb. I land square on top of her and we both fall, rolling down the next hill, down, down, down, down the steep slope, to the edge of a large ice lake.

The girl tries to bite me, but I push her head away. She kicks me in the place where it really really hurts and I step back, howling in pain. The red haze has taken over my vision now, and the girl seems to know it, for she suddenly looks at my eyes and says, "You're red all over now." Then she is bowled over as I tackle her and we both skid across the ice. She stops skidding just at the edge of the ice, and her hair curls onto the lake's surface.

_The redness is all I see. The fire raging inside me burns bright and hot._

Then I remember Burushiru's words.

_"No, you are not a murderer."_

The red haze clears away. I'm left, sitting on top of a girl, at the edge of an ice pont, in the middle of a taiga biome, with silent tears coursing down my cheeks.

The girl looks concerned.

"Are you all right?" she asks softly.

My vision tunnels, to blackness, and I slip off the ice and into the lake.


	7. Chapter 7

I sputter as the water encloses over my head, but I'm powerless. I start to be dragged under by some unstoppable force. Looking down I see a thick, black tentacle around my ankle.

Swearing loudly, the profanity comes up as large bubbles. The owner of the tentacle is a massive squid. This isn't the tame squid variety of the lakes near Treefell. This is a writhing, red one, with massive teeth and a body as big as an abandoned mineshaft is long.

My air level is going down dramatically. I struggle for breath, to catch one of the bubbles rising from the monstrosity, but every one pops over my face and I'm reduced to torment again.

Then the squid drops, down a waterfall, into a cave. It's a big cave, hollowed out of rock, solid rock, deep below the earth. From the quality of the darkness, I'm thousands of feet under.

The squid climbs up the falls again. I tense, looking around my vicinity for any danger. I immediately spot some.

On every wall of every bit of the cave is what looks like a red, glowing Slime. Where they sit on the walls, steam rises off them, and the rock crackles and gives off sparks. These molten Slimes do not ooze off the walls, more do a sort of crawling motion with the rigid portions of their bodies, then stand in a ring around me.

WHAT DO MY BRETHERIN ABOVE SAY? asks a Magma Slime in my head.

"They say I am a murderer," I reply.

WELL YOU ARE. WHAT'S THE USE IN BLOODY DENYING THAT? The eyes of the Magma Slimes (or Magma Cubes) glow in triumph. I open my mouth, then close it. I have nothing to say.

WE CAN PROVE THE FACT, says another Magma Cube. It creates a heat haze; in it I see myself massacreing a whole horde of Slimes, their runny juice slipping around my legs as the king falls. WE CAN TAKE YOU TO THE SURFACE, BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE ABLE TO BE WATCHED CLOSELY BY ONE OF OUR SCOUTERS, the same one offers.

"Anything," I reply. "Just get me out."

The squid drops down, lashes out a thick, crimson tentacle, and drags me up to the surface at rocketlike speed. I hurl out of the water, land on the ice, and am instantly knocked out.

) ooooooooooooooo (

I awake in bed, at home. The room is empty. Mushroom soup sits by me, simmering.

Was I sick?

I have no recollection

.

Two yellow eyes stare at me from the rafters. I squint. There's a Magma Cube, a small one, sitting there, staring at me. It blinks at me.

what do you say

, the Magma Cube whispers in my brain. _am i doing a good job?_

"Eh," I think. "Sure. So you're gonna be following me around?"

i think you could call it that, yes

, Magma Cube replied.

"What do I call you," I ask the thing. It's voice is silent for a moment.

i don't know. why, do you think a tiny like me should have a name?

"I shall call you Stimpy," I bequeath onto the creature.

stimpy?

the Cube thinks to me. _well, then, stimpy it is._

Burushiru comes in at that moment. He looks up, sees Stimpy perched on the rafters, lets out a cry, takes out his sword, and readies it. Then he hesitates. He puts the sword away.

"What is that monster?" he asks.

"It's called Stimpy," I answer. "So what are we gonna do today?"

"Go to the nearest town which we discovered," Burushiru says. "It is far from the forest, and we may yet run out of food before making it outside to the Great Sand Dunes, where said town is located."

Stimpy springs down from the rafters and looks at Burushiru.

who is this fellow? Stimpy asks me.

"Oh, he's Burshiru," I answer. "He won't hurt you."

) oooooooooo (

Stimpy meets Redfall, and begins inspecting him. Redfall tries to kick it once, and ends up with the tip of his boot glowing red hot. Stimpy's eyes glow.

REMEMBER, the deeper Magma Cube's voice says, WE ARE WATCHING YOUR FRIENDS. YOU DON'T WANT TO BE IN BAD COMPANY.

We set out after we have eaten, our stomachs full and our packs even more so. Redfall runs ahead, occasionally yelling "Creeper!" and ducking back as an explosion sounds, then running off ahead again.

Abberants appear. Do not ask me what I mean by abberants. ...Okay, I'll tell you. I mean things like Archers, with skulls and bones of black, and glowing red eyes. They carry stone swords, hewed from the deepest bedrock, it seems.

We soon have trouble with these. I take out many with my sword, but never keep the heads or the cursed stone swords, or even the bones the thing drops.

Burushiru and I, as Redfall scouts ahead again and we set up camp for the night, try to think of a name for these ghastly creatures. I mention the name wither, as the skeletons look shrivelled, blackened, and burnt, and Burushiru catches onto this. We set about killing more of these Wither Skeletons, and somehow or other Stimpy seems not to mind.

"Why don't you mind me killing the Wither Skeletons?" I ask Stimpy.

they are abominations, Stimpy says.

A Wither Skeleton steps out of the trees in that moment. I grab an axe, and slice its head clean off.

The next town is still elusive when, a day later, we arrive at the edge of the Great Sand Dunes, a massive stretch of the dryest land imaginable. An almost tangible heat haze swims in the near distance. The water, as we continue, is getting lower and lower. There is half of a can left, and even that amount is decreasing. Our supply isn't even clean or cool anymore; there is sand floating at the top like a dirty haze.

As we are trekking through the desert the day after we entered, Burushiru suddenly hides behind a rock.

"Do not keep in the open," he says as we pile in behind him.

We look from behind the rock at what caused Burushiru to hide. It's a Fourleg, one of massive proportions, with bent legs on joints like gears. Each leg is as tall as a person. The Fourleg gives rattling hissing noises loud as a cannon, and around It I see more normal-sized Fourlegs scuttling to and fro, bringing food to the monstrosity.

"Is that the mutant that destroyed your village?" I ask. Redfall and Burushiru nod. I steal out into the shadows of a towering dune, and wait for a Fourleg to come my way on an errand.

The first Fourleg that comes my way I pick up and hurl at the dune above the mutant and its lackeys. The explosion brings tons of sand on top of the group. Only the mutant survives, leaping out and landing with a boom in front of me. The rock behind which Redfall and Burushiru are hiding explodes. Sand flies out of the ground, creating a crater of stone into which sand is rapidly filling.

The mutant inhales and belches a Fourleg minion out of its mouth from an egg. I kill the minion, but there are more, and they are surrounding. I try to run, but one of the Fourlegs decides to blow up at that moment, sending me down again into a much deeper crater, as the Fourleg charged the other ones to explode as well. Bigleg (the mutant) tries to stamp on me with its foot, but I roll out of the way. It tries again. The barbed talon inches its way into my side. I scream and rip the talons out, then chuck my axe at it. The axe bends and the handle shatters in a cloud of wood splinters.

Bigleg jumps onto the top ground and advences towards Burushiru and Redfall. I try to climb up the slick sand, and manage to figure out where the sandstone ledges are. I climb on these to the top, where I watch the thing tearing up great chunks of sand with its talons. Bigleg inhales again, ready to pummel Burushiru and Redfall with a whole armada of Fourlegs.

Just then I notice the crook at the back of Bigleg's jointed neck. It's splitting, widening, and allowing an arm to poke through. Gunpowder squirts out. Bigleg looks startled, then explodes. Two figures leap out of the disintegrating monster, their swords and guns blazing. They're both in iron armor. On their heads are fearsome battle helmets. They sheathe their weapons and run over to us.

"We got out just in time," the smaller of the two says. "Who are you?"

"I'm Overseer," I reply. The man sticks out a hand. I shake it, intrigued by the feel of the rough metal glove.

"Well, I'm Festus," the warrior says. "This is Seraph." He points to the larger man standing next to him, with a huge sword strapped to his back. "We're traveling knights," he explains.

"Good to see so," I reply. "Look, do you have a campsite we could all go to?"

"Over this hill there's the actual town of Sandsweep," Seraph replies. "Sandsweep was just being plagued by these buggers. Beat all but one, and that was the one that ate us."

The hill is small, and more rocky than sandy. As we crest it, I see a collection of sandstone huts. People mill about. There's a market on one of the sides, but it's nearly empty because the sun has started to set.

We enter, and everyone stops what they're doing and looks at us. We look, from the way we carry our weapons and tools, like heroes. They shuffle away, into the shadows of their homes.

At the far end of town there is a large sandstone building. The owner of the township resides there. He greets us at the door. The visitor rooms, he says, are prepped already.

As night closes in, the Fourlegs and Archers and Walkers come out. They circle the town, growling, hissing, and even whooping. But we're safe. The Glowstone lamps around the perimeter burns the undeads, and stops the Fourlegs in their tracks.


End file.
